The danger of icons

Every movement, every group, runs this risk of turning certain people into icons. It is hard to have a movement without leadership. It is hard for that leadership to not become icons, and it is almost impossible to have a non-hierarchical group once the leaders have become icons.

I was blissfully ignorant of what made up the vegan/AR movement until this past year. It is always a bit of a disillusionment once you start to become aware of the movement politics, the disagreements, the all-too human aspects, especially because it seems to follow a honeymoon period where you are enchanted with the players, the things they’re accomplishing, awe at the amount of time they’ve been considering the issues.

I think both aspects are actually important to our personal development. The honeymoon period serves its purpose – when we’re new to the movement, to the literature, and to the issues, we need mentors. We tend to look for the authority figures to help guide us. The danger is that we can easily put the leaders of the movement in a position where we refuse to see that they are human, flawed, and learning and changing just as we are. We actually need the disillusionment to remind us of that.

Within the movement itself is this growing split between “abolition” and “welfare”. At least, it is growing to me. It could simply be that it is my awareness of the split that is growing. In many respects, it makes sense to just call them two different movements, though from the outside looking in, we’re not to the point where it would be comprehensible for people not in “the movement” to see that there might actually be two different movements. Does it matter? It certainly doesn’t from the perspective of being out in the trenches, trying to convince people to go vegan.

My views are most closely aligned with the “abolitionists”, though of course what views you are allowed to have and still call yourself an abolitionist is up for debate, and in fact seem to be becoming more and more absolutist. There is a lot of name calling on all sides, even on the same side, it seems. There is extensive iconification of some of the key figures on all sides as well, which is naturally only recognized as a problem on the “other” sides.

Disagreement is essential, as is disillusionment. We need to actively prevent the people we admire from becoming icons. One of the things I love about Bob and Jenna Torres is that they are so willing to publicly (on their podcasts , forums, wherever) admit when they are wrong. They have become influential enough that I would not doubt they are also in danger of becoming iconified, and I only hope that all of the people they mentor through their podcasts and writings actually listen when they say “hey, we were wrong, people told us we were wrong and we thought more about it and listened.” It is so important that we recognize that no matter how much further down this path someone is, no matter how much more experienced they are or how much they’ve written, they are still fallible.

We should question, we should come to our own conclusions. We should, in fact, periodically question our own conclusions, just to make sure we’re not letting our own views become entrenched.

Questioning is what brought us to veganism, and the last thing we should do is stop questioning in a misguided belief that we have come as far as we can. Veganism is the start, not the end. The leaders can be wrong, just as we can be wrong. We should start with the assumption that everyone is wrong about some things. We need to discourage statements about how we “owe leaders respect”, and we need to be cautious not to blindly quote things the leaders have said.

My view is that no one, not even our influential leaders, are 100% consistent, perfect, pure. If we look hard enough, we’ll find inconsistencies. No group, no person is perfect. Remind yourself of that every time you quote anyone. Remind yourself every time you are critical of someone for not being perfect in their views that you, yourself, have inconsistencies.

My disillusionment has grown to the point where I’m frankly tired of too much in the movement, and while I feel my views are most aligned with the abolitionists, I’m fast getting to the point where I want to reject that term. The illuminating point in that realization is that, disillusioned or not, my own actions have not changed to any great degree. In fact, my activism has hardly changed since realising there were differences within the movement, that there was such a thing as abolitionism and welfarism . We are each our own movement. We are stronger when banded together, but I don’t think we’ll ever be a strong movement as long as we hold Puritan style ideals that we insist people live up to before we’ll work with them or support them. Compromise is part of real life, and assuming we don’t sell out our beliefs, there is not actually anything wrong with it, despite the absolutist views that are often voiced.

Don’t get me wrong – there are things that we should not compromise on; that’s not what I’m going on about here. I’m talking about the small details that do not have an impact on one’s baseline beliefs, but which might very well be used to rake a person or organization over the coals of purity.

My example has to do with sanctuaries. There are three that I have close personal experience with. One has an icon’s stamp of abolitionist approval, though that icon has tried to pressure them to remove some links from their website. A reason would probably be found to deny “abolitionist” status to the other two, possibly based on what is not said on their websites, or what books they might recommend to people. These are not details I’m concerned with, in light of the fact that their overall beliefs are consistent with mine, and on that they do not waver. When I look at whether these three sanctuaries are “worthy” of my support, I believe that they are, and I base that on my personal interaction with the sanctuaries, with the people running them. All three sanctuaries are different. All three have separate strengths, different ways of reaching the community, and different communities altogether. All three hold, in my opinion, beliefs consistent with my own, even if they are not identical in every respect. All three are, in my opinion, acting consistent with their beliefs. All three have some views that I disagree with, but when it comes to the bottom line , we are on the same page. I’m content to let purity live in the minds of others; meanwhile I support people I have determined through personal experience to be following a path I think is effective.

The same evaluation can be applied to any organization. Even PETA, who I disagree with more often than not, has some literature that is consistent with my views. I can hand out their literature that has a message I agree with, even if I think the organization’s views are not the best match to mine. In fact, just today I got an email from them and agreed to let them send me, at their cost, 50 leaflets on the dangers of leaving dogs in cars in the heat. It is information that people need to be educated on, and if PETA is willing to send me 50 leaflets with the information, I’m willing to get it into people’s hands. I don’t have to agree with PETA’s sexist anti-fur campaign to be comfortable using their leaflets to potentially save the lives of some dogs from dying of the heat in a closed vehicle.

Finding points of disagreement should be a goal. Not for the mere sake of being contentious, but as a sanity check, as a way to ward off iconification. If we can’t see the flaws and accept the (acceptable) compromises of every single person we look up to, we have work to do. No one is perfect; not seeing flaws generally means we’re letting ourselves be blinded, and are probably simply parroting the ideology of others. That’s not healthy. The flaws don’t necessarily invalidate their arguments, and our admiration for them doesn’t mean we can’t disagree with them. Real life requires compromise, leaving purity in the theoretical realm. This does not mean we compromise our ethics; neither should the purity of absolute ideals paralyze us from taking any action at all.

Does this make me not an abolitionist, that I’ll leaflet with some abolitionist literature from a non-abolitionist organization? Or that I can accept a lack of purity in the people and organizations I support? I don’t give a damn, to tell you the truth. Abolition is a term that is becoming as iconified as some of the people in the movement, and if I need to avoid applying that label to myself, so be it. Regardless of my label, my fight is the same.

I have very little to add to this post, other than I was thinking of religious leaders, cult leaders, and dictators and how they are often held as icons and this allows their rise to power and then the absolute power corrupts.
It is great to read about someone who has not drank the Kool-Aid and can follow her own beliefs.

I think that in a very basic sense the questioning, not the label we apply to ourselves is vital. If nothing else, we need to keep emphasizing that veganism and animal advocacy are within everyone’s reach. You don’t have to be a Ph.D., you don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to lead a group. Everyone, no matter who you are, can make significant contributions.

I have some issues with Peta, and then other areas where I admire them and think their contributions are valuable. More than anything I’m dismayed that Peta will never under any circumstances say “Ooops, that was a bad idea.” Like you say Bob and Jenna Torres will admit when there’s a problem and revise their views. If you’re dealing with an organization or person who can’t admit to ever making a mistake, they’ve set up a situation where they have to throw “good money after bad” so to speak, because to change course would be admitting there’s a problem.

I have experience only with a couple of sanctuaries. There is one I’ve interacted with where I know the people in charge put veganism as a top priority. If they recommend books that aren’t 100% abolitionist or whatever, that doesn’t really concern me. I’m less worried about the label than I am the core of the message. But then again, I’ve been called “a welfarist” myself, although I don’t think that’s entirely fair.

For this reason, as you say, I have issues with the welfarist contingent and I have issues at times with the abolitionist movement (though I lean more in that direction). I’m really for being smart and being honest with what we’re doing and saying. Being smart as I see it doesn’t always mean publishing huge books, it means understanding where people are coming from and then trying to reach them with a consistent message. It means identifying the people we can reach and targeting messages. The welfarist leaders believe they are doing this actually, but since I’ve seen no data or studies on the effectiveness of their message or why they target certain groups, I have to take issue. Then it goes back to being honest–most people I know who are firmly in the welfare camp are vegan themselves, but they believe that others simply cannot become vegan so they tone down the message to be about humane eggs or humane meat. I feel that insincerity shows and will cause people to discount our message (though I don’t have studies either), so I think we just need to keep laying our cards on the table and promoting veganism. As Gary Francione (I know, an icon) said some people may hear the vegan message and decide on their own that they want to eat humane meat, or just want to cut back and not be vegan. But we need to keep the discussion focused on what it’s actually about.

I do agree that too often people are willing to just blindly follow without thinking for themselves or questioning their mentors. And you’re absolutely right that “questioning” is what got us to where we are now in terms of our ethics and actions.

I feel also that “abolition” is the new buzz word (“vegan” being the previous one). People are too quick to latch onto this label and reject anything that doesn’t fall into the framework of the theory without considering real-life situations. That is not to say one should compromise their core ethics, but one should recognise when sticking to theory without action doesn’t yield results in specific situations (e.g., refusing to volunteer at a shelter or rescue that feeds the dogs & cats donated meat-based foods).

rich: good point on the cults and the dictators. The refusal to question, the sort of blind trust in The Word that we often see, definitely seems cultish at times. And the attacks we get when we voice disagreement, definitely a bit too dictatorial for me!

neva: as usual, great comment! you brought up so many good points. Some of them flitted through my mind as I wrote this, so I’m glad you brought them up! The fact that you don’t have to be an intellectual to be an effective activist is something that should be emphasized, for sure. In fact, two of the strongest activists I know personally, who are both about as abolitionist as I’ve ever seen, came to the philosophy through experience and evaluation of effectiveness, not through prior reading.

I don’t mean to discount reading and studying, because they can definitely be important; the thinking, questioning, evaluating always is. I know Bob Torres has ranted in the past (and will in the future!) about there being a tendency to look down on the thinking in favor of action, with the implication that any action is better than thinking and discussing the movement, the tactics, the philosophy. And I’m not really disagreeing with that. I just think our experience informs some of us more than reading, and as long as we are willing to take a hard look at where it takes us, I think it is worthwhile. For me, I came at it through instinct first (certain campaigns always made me uncomfortable, and I couldn’t put my finger on it for a long time) and then the reading definitely helped me to work my way through the logic.

Anyway, we need both, for sure, the thinking and the action.

I like what you said about being “smart” meaning understanding people. That is such a good point. Most of this know this without thinking, and we adjust our approaches based on how we think will best fit the individual or group we’re trying to reach. But a bigger look at this will probably help us all understand better, and therefore be more effective activists.

Also, what you said about Gary F saying that people may decide on their own to not be vegan, it reminds me of what a good friend says. Something along the lines of not taking away the ability of others to say “no.” Which is the same as saying that if you give them a chance to say “yes”, “no” is only a possibility, but if you don’t give them the option, “no” is a guarantee.

Really good points!

Ida: good point about the buzz word aspect of abolition. I had that feeling, but honestly couldn’t be very sure. I am really too new to the movement (in the kind of depth that would let me see this) to have any confidence that it really was becoming a buzz word.

I think that if people have a whole range of choices in front of them in terms of where they can spend their time and energy, and one of the choices is clearly abolitionist in its entirety (if that is possible!), then it makes sense to ignore the rest of the options. But most of us have to look at the available options, figure out where our particular skills, time constraints, experience and interests would make us most effective, and go with that. Of course some people are able to create their activism space in a way that they are not constrained – podcasts are a good example of that. I’m also thinking of herbivore and food fight and three little figs. Though I had that conversation with Sarah and Lynn of TLF, and they said that running a vegan market is great, but you’re still dealing with much of the non-vegan industry you’d like to be able to avoid, and the shipping, and things like that, so there is very little that is perfect and pure. Even when running your own vegan business.

To clarify (and you already know this), what I said was not a criticism of abolitionist theory or practice. It is really a criticism of those that follow without thinking or considering real life situations as the one I described. I think your example of vegan businesses is also a very good example.

Yes, I should be clear about that too. Just in case I wasn’t before, and I’m never sure! My criticism is about blindly following, refusing to question and evaluate everyone (including ourselves), and really it is a criticism of either pure theory or pure action. Not a criticism of abolition itself.

There has to be the combination of thinking and action, but I also don’t believe that you need to read the philisophical texts to come to a thoughtful conclusion about what would be effective action. It can help (as it did with me) to do some reading, but to be honest, I have gotten more real value out of discussions with other activist friends. We never agree on everything, which I think is good, but we always push ourselves to think, and consider things that may have come from the experience of others, but not ourselves.

That actually brings up another point – too often, I feel, part of the blind following includes the dismissal of the experience of others. I know I have experienced that, and I know you and Michele, and probably all of us have to some degree. And it brings up so many questions, as to what would drive that type of response.

I use the word “mentor” sometimes to show respect to people who are better at something, or more knowledgeable than I. There are some things I want to completely research and learn for myself, and other things that I look to others for. I have a work-related mentor who helps me with my career. I have a spiritual mentor (interesting for an atheist, eh?). I use Gary Francione as an example of a mentor because he’s already done all the hard work to formulate a theory that seems reasonable TO ME regarding animal rights. That doesn’t mean I can’t disagree with him or accept everything he says as truth. For example, I often say he has a “delivery disorder.” I think sometimes his delivery shuts the ears of his potential audience. But that’s me. You might disagree. And more important, you CAN disagree.

Making someone into an icon, and/or treating that person like a guru, is sheer laziness. We are all human, and to even for a moment pretend that any person–The Dalai Lama included–has no flaws, is dangerous, not to mention absurd. We all should be looking for the guru within, not the guru outside. But that’s hard work and many people would rather give themselves to a guru so they don’t have to think for themselves.

I don’t blame you for being exhausted with this. My advice is to do exactly what you do: continue to do your awesome work in the way that serves your personal mission. You couldn’t possible do a better, more sincere job. Don’t waste your precious time, energy and talent on people who try to force you to take your beliefs in any direction that doesn’t make sense to you. And DON’T apologize for allowing yourself to evolve and be in whatever state you’re in.

I listen to the Vegan Freaks podcast semi-regularly, peruse the animal advocacy blogs on a daily basis, etc., for the simple reason: to stay abreast of what’s going on. Yes, there’s certainly some serious division in “the movement,” some of it necessary, I think, and some of it downright petty and hard to understand without some detailed context which most of us are not privy to. But back to Vegan Freaks for a moment: that particular website, to which I have been a “member” since almost its beginning, is about as cult-like as it gets. I don’t know whether or not it’s intentional or not, but that certainly feels like the place to go to get insulted, put down, made to feel stupid, and argued with over the most mundane and uninteresting details. I only mention this as a counter to the claim that they are somehow different. What would be different is if, even VeganFreaks, would hold higher standards with regard to how we talk to one another, whether it’s online or not, it doesn’t really matter. This is a matter of sorting out some serious ideas, important ones, no less, and until we learn a little respect and dignity—the very same virtues we are attempting to extend to non-human animals—where will we ever go? What do we hope to accomplish by perpetuating a different kind of violence? Is it really less harmful? We lose so many potential vegans with our inability to be kind, decent, clear, focused and intelligent. We need to figure out the best way to do all of those things. We’ll have to have arguments, disagreements, and serious discussions; but this calls upon us to be more than we are accustomed. I don’t mean to be glib and suggest that it’s not frustrating or easy; it isn’t. But that is precisely how we will progress if we progress at all.

I agree with you that it’s important not to make martyrs out of anyone in the movement. I am certainly guilty of this. But it’s a terrible set-up: just the fact that we are all human beings lends itself to the possibility that people will meet us in our darkest and least appealing moments, and surely we’ll disappoint others. It’s better to keep an awareness of that. It’s a good thing to admire others; that helps make all of us better people. But putting them on a pedestal — and I am talking about ANYONE here, even the people we (or who they themselves) think founded the movement, or are the reasons we are here — is dangerous and counterproductive. All of have the ability to see things clearly and intelligently, without having to resort to another person as “the” authority. We can all find clarity; it’s a matter of listening. We can also accept the good and bad in others, just as we must accept both about ourselves; and we don’t need to think others are superhuman.

I have a couple problems with your comment. First of all, I would appreciate if people would leave the forum slams out in the future. We all know that the forum that any one person feels comfortable in is primarily dependent on their own preferences; for every nasty thing someone says about one forum, similar nasty things can be said about every single other forum. Everyone has different experiences and different perceptions of the same events. Furthermore, you put words in my mouth, which is a bit of an issue for me.

I mentioned the vegan freak forums in passing, as a specific place I have seen an instance of specific people doing something specific – namely Bob and Jenna admitting a mistake; my statement and theirs is independent of the mass group of individuals (with the widely varying life experiences, perceptions, perspectives, communcations styles, etc) of the Vegan Freak Forums, and my passing comment regarding the forums was in no way implying that the vegan freak forums are different in some unspecified way. My apologies if you felt that was implied, as it was not intended, and I’ve now annoyed myself by spending five times as many words explaining this than the orginal statement was in length.

I’m also really wary of people deciding for me what the ideal vegan is. For you, it may very well be that “kind, decent, clear, focused and intelligent” is what you aspire to be, and would like a community of similar people. There is nothing wrong with that, though it is not my version of ideal, and I am uncomfortable with the implied assumption that your ideal is a universal one. Perhaps you didn’t mean to imply that – it was simply how I read your statement.

We should expect our visions to be different. That was part of my point in the post. We don’t have to be the same, think the same, react the same, etc. We need to think for ourselves, evaluate everything, come to our own conclusions, and be true to ourselves. In fact, Mary at animal person has a great audio on this – if you go to her blog, check out her “animal person minute” from a few days ago. She talks about gurus, and explains quite clearly the mistake that people often make.

And along these lines, of what our visions are and how they differ from person to person, I value honesty and an absense of manipulation far more than (what I often find to be) a superficial kindness. Some will appreciate those who can get straight to the point, in a way that might seem abrupt to others. We’re all different, shaped by our experiences, our families, our personalities, our time constraints, and any number of things.

The violence you mention is a bit confusing, and seems completely out of context. violence is another tricky subject, of course, given that it means something different to everyone. I can infer that violence means to you, at least in part, people not communicating in a way that you are comfortable with. It sounded out of context and out of nowhere to me, when that was equated with the violence suffered by animals exploited by humans. I am much more forgiving of people with a different communication style than I am of people perpetuating physical violence on animals, human or not.

This is, perhaps, an area where I am willing to let people slide, yet take my own stand when it comes to honesty and manipulation. Which goes back to my point – these are decisions we each make as individuals, and the decisions should be specific to ourselves. What we are willing to forgive and what we can’t let slide, we have to figure it out for ourselves, yet not assume it applies to anyone else.

“My views are most closely aligned with the ‘abolitionists’, though of course what views you are allowed to have and still call yourself an abolitionist is up for debate, and in fact seem to be becoming more and more absolutist.”

I am an abolitionist. I am on this side because I think that Gary Francione’s property analysis shows that animal exploitation is unamenable to meaningful reform through animal welfare, because the latter is structurally defective. Francione’s theoretical work combined with the empirical evidence shows – dispositively – that any time and money spent on animal welfare is an opportunity cost. Thus having anything less than an “absolutist” stance toward animal welfare is a strategic mistake – a waste of time and money that could be better spent on vegan/abolitionist education.

The idea that there is something wrong – per se – with absolutism is an insidious belief that is completely divorced from evidence and theory. If theory and evidence show that it is strategically efficacious to take an absolutist stance toward animal welfare, and we do not, because we are ideologically committed to the inefficacy of absolutism, then we will be gulity of adhereing to insidious dogma, rather than being normatively guided by sound theory and evidence.

“In fact, my activism has hardly changed since realising there were differences within the movement, that there was such a thing as abolitionism and welfarism . We are each our own movement. We are stronger when banded together…”

The claim that we are stronger when banded together is based on the false assumption that welfare and rights are compatible and so reconcilable. This is one of the central abolitionist arguments against welfare:

(1) A welfare law could theoretically be in the interests of animals but not also in the interests of the exploiters
(2) Exploiters’ property interests in animals always trump animals’ welfare interests (the conclusion of argument 1)

Conclusion: a welfare law that was in the interests of animals but not also in the interests of the exploiters would be rejected outright by the framework of the system.

Overall conclusion: animal welfare serves no more than the right of exploiters to maximally exploit their animal property.

Thus, in banding together, we would be conjoining a structrally defective paradigm (welfarism) that is not causally related to abolition (because it is inherently incapable of doing anything other than serving exploiters’ property interests) to a movement whose overarching goal is to abolish animals’ property status. As such, conjoining welfare and rights would not produce some sort of synergy, but rather a movement that employs antithetical types of activism (welfarism on the one hand and antispeciesism/vegan education on the other), the former of which is inherently suited to neutralize latter.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be a strong movement as long as we hold Puritan style ideals that we insist people live up to before we’ll work with them or support them.”

I deplore the insidious recasting of principled antispeciesism and strategic consistency in pejorative terms – “purism,” “absolutism,” etc. Animal welfare groups are not opposed – per se – to killing and exploiting animals. For example, HSUS supports sustainable agriculture. New welfare groups promote reforms that are neither predicated on nor result in the recognition that animals have inherent value that must be nonconsequentially protected; on the contraty, their reforms are nothing but property disputes over what are, or are not, the most economically efficient ways of killing and confining animal property respectively; and PeTA kills healthy nonhuman persons. To claim that it is problematic — “purist”/“absolutist” — for antispeciesism advocates to unequivocally reject groups that promote speciesist ideologies and kill healthy nonhuman persons is analogous to saying that it is “purist” to unequivocally reject racism and sexism. Why is it “purist” to unequivocally reject speciesism, but morally obligatory to unequivocally reject racism and sexism? The starkly differential treatment of the human and nonhuman contexts is proof that the “animal rights” movement is itself latently speciesist.

Thus we reject groups like PeTA and HSUS not because we are “purist,” but because we think – rightly – that speciesism is as morally offensive as racism and sexism, and as such that principled antispeciesism must be an axiom – a foundational principle – for the animal rights. Nobody in the animal rights movement should give a damn if people say that we are “purist” for unequivocally rejecting speciesism and animal exploitation.

And the claim that, even though we disagree with them morally/theoretically, it is strategically efficacious to support welfare groups is simply the perpetuation of the (new welfarist) mistake that it is (strategically) astute to employ a non-rights framework for animal rights activism. It is extremely counterintuitive to suppose that a strategy that negates the theory in whose name we claim to act is the most efficacious way of implementing that theory in society; and moreover this supposition ignores the fact that welfare is structurally defective, and that as such, as long as welfarism is the dominant paradigm in the animal movement, animal exploitation will be unamenable to meaningful reform. Thus to support – whether financially or ideally – groups like PeTA and HSUS simply helps to sustain the viability of the paradigm that can lead to nothing but more and exacerbated animal exploitation.

In sum: the unequviocal rejection of welfarism is not “purism.” It is an indispensably necessary prerequisite of abolition.